Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T19:52:07.923Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Introduction: Digital History in African Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2020

Jennifer Hart
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This brief introduction to a special section on Digital History in African Studies situates three articles on recent digital humanities initiatives among African historians within the broader histories of the use of digital methodologies in the study of Africa. In particular, it highlights the way that Africanist digital scholarship sits at the intersection of digital historical representation, community engagement, and academic research. While Africanist digital history builds on the work of a much broader digital humanities community, historians of Africa also draw on their discipline’s long history of methodological innovation to raise important questions about the potential contributions and limitations of digital technologies in academic research.

Résumé

Résumé

Cette courte introduction à cette section spéciale porte sur la place de l’histoire numérique dans les études africaines et situe les trois articles parmi les initiatives récentes en humanités numériques adoptées par les historiens de l’Afrique qui utilisent des méthodologies numériques pour l’étude de l’Afrique. Cette introduction souligne tout particulièrement la façon dont le travail scientifique numérique sur l’Afrique se situe à l’intersection de la représentation historique et numérique, de l’engagement des communautés étudiées et de la recherche universitaire. Alors que l’histoire numérique africaniste s’appuie sur le travail d’une communauté des humanités numériques beaucoup plus large, les historiens de l’Afrique s’appuient également sur la longue histoire d’innovation méthodologique de leur discipline pour soulever des questions importantes sur les contributions et les limites potentielles des technologies numériques dans la recherche universitaire.

Type
Digital History
Information
History in Africa , Volume 47 , June 2020 , pp. 269 - 274
Copyright
© African Studies Association, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allman, Jean, “Kwame Nkrumah, African Studies, and the Politics of Knowledge Production in the Black Star of Africa,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 46–2 (2013), 181–203.Google Scholar
Getz, Trevor R., Ehrisman, Lindsay and Yeboah, Tony, “‘We Should Have Maintained This Unity, Then There Would Be More Development:’ Lessons from a Pop-Up Museum of the Fante Confederation,” History in Africa 46 (2019), 195–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gold, Matthew K., and Klein, Lauren F. (eds.), Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Kazeem, Yomi, Quartz (14 September 2018), https://qz.com/africa/1390318/africa-has-the-most-expensive-internet-in-the-world/, accessed 31 July 2019.Google Scholar
Kim, Dorothy, and Stommel, Jesse (eds.), Disrupting the Digital Humanities (New York: Punctum Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Losh, Elizabeth, and Wernimont, Jacqueline (eds.), Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and the Digital Humanities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lovejoy, Henry B., Lovejoy, Paul E., Hawthorne, Walter, Alpers, Edward A., Candido, Mariana and Hopper, Matthew S., “Redefining African Regions for Linking Open-Source Data,” History in Africa 46 (2019), 5–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lovejoy, Paul, “The Upper Guinea Coast and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database,” African Economic History 38 (2010), 1–27Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmood, “Between the Public Intellectual and the Scholar: Decolonization and Some Post-Independence Initiatives in African Higher Education,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 17–1 (2016), 68–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbembe, Achille, “Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive” (Africa is a Country: E-book, 2015), https://africaisacountry.atavist.com/decolonizing-knowledge-and-the-question-of-the-archive, accessed 31 July 2019.Google Scholar
Nwokeji, G. Ugo, and Eltis, David, “The Roots of the African Diaspora: Methodological Considerations in the Analysis of Names in the Liberated African Registers of Sierra Leone and Havana,” History in Africa 29 (2002), 365–379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyamnjoh, Francis B., “Decolonizing the University in Africa,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia, Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), https://oxfordre.com/politics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore–9780190228637-e–717, accessed 31 July 2019.Google Scholar
Risam, Roopika, New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Theimer, Kate, “A Distinction Worth Exploring: ‘Archives’ and ‘Digital Historical Representations,’” Journal of Digital Humanities 3–2 (2014), http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/3–2/a-distinction-worth-exploring-archives-and-digital-historical-representations/, accessed 31 July 2019.Google Scholar
The Rhodes Must Fall Movement, Rhodes Must Fall: The Struggle to Decolonize the Racist Heart of Empire (London: Zed Books, 2018).Google Scholar
Tiyambe Zeleza, Paul, “African Studies and Universities Since Independence,” Transition 101 (2009), 110–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar